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Mary Worth, 12/1/14

Despite Mary’s professed friendship for Hanna, she and her new beau were conspicuously absent from last week’s Thanksgiving feast. Apparently they spent the holiday at Sean’s assisted living unit, bantering about toast. “It’s the simple details that make all the difference,” Hanna says, pleased that the tasteless, pre-sliced white bread that Sean has pulled out of a plastic bag will be made vaguely edible by the toasting process.

Note that Sean has a top-of-the-line, four-slot toaster. He knows what the ladies like.

Dennis the Menace, 12/1/14

Having written a blog post more or less daily for ten years, I have come to have a certain degree of sympathy for the longrunning comics I mock, and to understand that not every day’s effort can be a winner: some days, you just sort of run with the joke you have and hope for a better tomorrow. And yet I don’t think that justifies pulling out a joke that was already ancient when it appeared in the first Bill and Ted movie 25 years ago, Dennis the Menace. I really, don’t. Do better.

Gil Thorp, 12/1/14

The t-shirt joke in panel three is probably similarly ancient, but I have to admit I kind of love it. I’m willing to overlook the fact that teams from public and Catholic high school rarely play against each other, in my experience, or that it’s rare for a football team to score 11 points. Any sports trash-talk that involves papal regnal names and Roman numerals is entirely acceptable to me.

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Heathcliff, 11/21/14

So Heathcliff being depicted as hanging in the mid-air, on the verge of descending onto some hapless soul with claws unsheathed, is a thing in Heathcliff that happens semi-regularly! This is the first time Heathcliff’s owner-grandma and owner-boy have gotten in on the action, though. Ha ha, it’s funny because Heathcliff’s owner-grandpa has money, and his family is going to tear his flesh from his bones in order to get it!

Funky Winkerbean, 11/21/14

Haha, remember when Bull got offered a job as a college coach and was so rapturously happy that he and his wife threatened to spend the week fucking? Well, instead they spent the week gloating about how much more money he was going to make, but now the job has been cruelly yanked away from him. This is why I think Funky Winkerbean is pretty savvy about its sadness-brand: when you make all your characters intensely unlikable, your readers don’t really mind knowing that only bad things will ever happen to them!

Dennis the Menace, 11/21/14

So … we’re not going to talk about the fact that Margaret is just wandering the streets dressed up as an angel? It’s not Christmas pageant season or anything. She’s obviously experiencing some kind of psychotic break, and all Dennis can do is make a joke about being a “bad boy.” I dub this whole scene pretty menacing in its callous neglect of her mental health.

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Spider-Man, 11/20/14

Oh, man, sequels! I love a sequel! This storyline just launching in Spider-Man is itself a sequel to the storyline about filming the first Marvella that ran in this strip back in 2006. Mr. Smiley, who had a slightly less dumb beard back then, managed to make Marvella profitable with innovative filmmaking techniques like just filming fight scenes in one take with no stunt supervision, so look for more of that this time around! That storyline also ended with our hero being knocked unconscious by a butler wearing a silly hat, so I’m really looking forward to this.

Apartment 3-G, 11/20/14

How much would I pay to see Margo give the wedding planner version of the “like tears in rain” speech from Blade Runner? “I’ve … seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Drunken bridesmaids weeping on the shoulder of Orion. Centerpieces on fire, glittering in the darkness in the Main Ballroom at the Ramada Inn and Conference Center in White Plains. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears, in rain, on your wedding day. Time … to see if the bartenders have any champagne left over.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/20/14

Dennis’s neighborhood has somehow devolved into Somalia-style anarchy, and he and Joey are trying to get ahead in the warlord game by setting up sidewalk checkpoints. Pretty menacing!